'Imagined Touch': experiencing the world of the deaf and blind

What would it be like to be deaf and blind? A new, unique theatrical performance is hoping to give audiences an insight.

Transcript

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LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Being both deaf and blind can be one of the most isolating conditions for human beings. It's estimated up to 300,000 Australians are deaf-blind as it's called.

Tonight two Melbourne artists hope to take an audience into the deaf-blind world through music, stories and immersion.

Madeleine Morris reports.

MICHELLE STEVENS, PERFORMER: This bus stop I'm sitting at is a nondescript bus stop. No matter how much I turn up my hearing aids, I can't hear the traffic.

God, it would only be so easy you know, it could be all over within a matter of minutes, perhaps seconds.

My name is Michelle Stevens and I'm actually one of the performers in Imagine Touch.

(Performing) Oh, it's lovely seeing you again. Oh. I can see you again. Beautiful.

Hey, shall we have a ...

(Laughter)

Good idea.

So this concept, we came up with is sort of saying, how can we make people deaf/blind so they can really get to appreciate sometimes the sense of isolation, the sense of frustration, also the sense of sometimes not knowing what is happening.

The sense of achievement.

JODEE MUNDY, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, IMAGINED TOUCH: I would like us to try scene one. My name is Jodee Mundy and I'm artistic director of Imagine Touch.

The piece has been written through Heather and Michelle's stories.

So Heather and Michelle are at the beginning of the show in front of a fabulous red curtain.

The audience are then guided into an unseen space with 360 degree projection and in the goggles the audience's senses start to deteriorate. So their vision becomes blurry.

In the headsets they hear electronic signals and the world of Michelle's experience of deterioration of sound with Michelle playing piano in the background.

MICHELLE STEVENS: I learned piano at school when I went to blind school and about 22 years ago I lost my hearing due to chronic ear infections.

I am able to pick up some of the sounds from the piano through the cochlear implant, but it's a very different way of listening.

The piano is really, really important to my life, because it gives me a sense of belonging. After practicing it feels like a sense of floating. So in actual fact, I'd much rather be with a piano sometimes than people.

HEATHER LAWSON, PERFORMER: My name is Heather Lawson and I'm speaking through an interpreter, who's putting my sign language into English for me.

I was born deaf myself. I could see in my younger years and I lost my sight through Usher's Syndrome.

This is Heather speaking. It's been five years now and I've barely left home.

I just want to lie in bed. There are people who keep coming to my front door, telling me that I need to learn how to use a cane.

I want to leave the house but I am so terrified.

MICHELLE STEVENS: Heather and I have had to learn to develop our trust in people and also, this is how the audience will actually learn about how to trust somebody and some people can find that a really hard concept to understand.

JODEE MUNDY: Another thing about deaf-blind people that is a really important principle for us to know, is when they meet someone, they feel their hand.

Sometimes they don't know if they're a man or a woman. They don't say what skin colour are you, what's your sexual orientation, what religion are you?

If they feel good and they're a nice person, that's all that matters and I think that is just really profound. And all of us could take a bit of a tip from their book.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: This is their life, everyday life. This is for me is only ten minutes you know. A short time. So I felt they are amazing. These deaf-blind people are amazing.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: Just getting a sense of their world basically, it's very limited and it's the first time I felt that today. Wow. Awesome.

MICHELLE STEVENS: The audience I would really like to take away the concept that it doesn't matter if you have challenges such as deaf-blindness, you can achieve.

I want them to sort of think that they can get over the challenges, because Heather and I have done that, I believe, very successfully.